Introducing Sanderling Bolivar.

Some of the developers behind a planned 110-acre beach resort with a private airport on Bolivar have teamed up for a luxury beachfront community a few miles down the shore from that project.

Jim Hayes, a real estate investor and developer, and Tom Harrison, the owner of construction company Allco LLC, are developing Sanderling, a 30-home subdivision at Johnson Beach, under their limited liability company, Johnson Beach Development LLC.

Lot sales have started, and five have already been sold, Hayes said.

The 15 homesites directly facing the beach are about 25,000 square feet each and priced at $400,000 each, while the 15 second-row lots are about 15,000 square feet and sell for $200,000. Buyers are free to combine lots for large homes and add amenities.

Houston-based White House Global Properties, owned by “House of Ho” reality TV star Washington Ho, is marketing the lots at 818 Rettilon Road. The marketing team includes Ho, Landon Bearden, Shelby Forbert and Chase Rhymes.

Allco started construction on the 33-acre site after Galveston County issued the final permits for the development last summer, Hayes said.

The streets and water and sewer infrastructure have been completed, and the developers are finalizing negotiations with the landscape contractor, Hutto, Texas-based Landshapes of Texas, to build an entryway and landscaping.

“There’s a 10-foot landscaping and fencing reserve around the entire perimeter of the property, so we can maintain the integrity of fencing and landscaping around the perimeter for a consistent look and feel,” Hayes said.

Buyers can use a homebuilder of their choice as long as they conform to the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety’s gold building standard, which ensures the buildings can withstand storms.

After Hurricane Ike wiped out entire neighborhoods on Bolivar Peninsula in 2008, new building codes were introduced to protect homes from suffering the same fate during other storms.

Hayes, who has a long real estate history on Bolivar, and has built stronger homes even before Ike.

“Everything we built survived (Ike), save for two houses that were actually destroyed by a house in front that was plucked up and washed right through it,” he said.

Hayes bought the land for Sanderling from the longtime owners, the Johnson family, in the early 2000s. A few years later, he had it under contract with a Dallas-based developer for $4.6 million when Ike hit and nixed that sale.

That company had planned to build 200 condos on the site, Hayes said. When he and Harrison decided to develop it themselves, they wanted to do it differently.

“Our development schema was ‘less is more,’ and instead of a high-density situation, in light of the sensitivity of where it lies — within 1,000 acres of Houston Audubon (Society’s) pristine internationally known birding sanctuary — we decided to do this in a very laid-back or low-key, low-density type development. There are more than 1,000 acres of undisturbed sanctuary around Sanderling that will never be developed, Hayes said.

Boliver is Coming

Despite concerns by conservationists, real estate investors and developers have rediscovered Bolivar since the Covid- 19 pandemic.

“People were looking for someplace to go, and the fact that they could be remote opened up this market … beyond what it was,” Hayes said. “It wasn’t just a weekend situation (anymore). It was a lifestyle change.”

Hayes and Harrison are also part of Bolivar Investment Group, which is developing the 110-acre Peninsula Beach Resort in Crystal Beach to include rental cottages, for-sale beach houses, condos, RV sites, a clubhouse, restaurant and even an airport.

In 2022, the Bolivar Beach Club & RV Resort opened at 796 State Highway 87 in Crystal Beach, becoming a Camp Margaritaville franchise a few months later, with plans to more than triple in size over the next few years.

Meanwhile, Ho was introduced to Hayes by his uncle and loved the idea of investing in Bolivar, where he used to go fishing as a kid, he said. “I think the value is there,” Ho said. “I see many of these homes on Bolivar that offer Airbnb and have a nice income. I love the fact that here, though, you get a 15,000- or a 25,000-square-foot lot.”

Ho also noted that sanderling might be the first of more — and bigger — Bolivar projects with Hayes.

Excerpt from HBJ Article by Florian Martin – Reporter from the Houston Business Journal – April 26, 2024